Mbeki, can’t you see through Mugabe’s deception?
This is an open letter to President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
Let me, with all due respect, first of all provoke your mind by asking
you some very relevant and fundamental questions.
Can you imagine President Mbeki, a situation where your party, the
ANC, does not hold a single parliamentary seat in Johannesburg, Durban,
Pretoria, Cape Town and all the other towns in South Africa?
Can you imagine, Comrade Mbeki, a situation where all the MPs, mayors,
councillors in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria, belong to an
opposition party?
Would you then truly from your heart of hearts, believe that you still
have the legitimacy and mandate to rule South Africa?
Would you still have the audacity to ignore and keep on calling the
leadership of such a political party “sell-outs”?
Given the blatant vote-buying, and one-sidedness of the police, the
State-sponsored brutality, manipulation of the voters’ roll, the results of
the recent parliamentary by-elections in Highfield and Kuwadzana have shown
beyond doubt that it’s easier for a camel to march through the eye of a
needle than for Zanu PF to win an election in Harare.
Can you imagine, Comrade Mbeki, a situation where your party, the ANC,
finds it impossible to win a parliamentary seat in Soweto? The very Soweto
which was the cradle of the ANC? The very Soweto where Nelson Mandela hailed
from, where you and your wife are registered to vote? Where you and your
wife vote under the glare of television cameras?
Would that not be a severe jolt to your mandate and legitimacy as the
elected leader of South Africa?
The result of the recent two by-elections have also blown to
smithereens the the so-called “land issue”.
If the land issue was at the centre of Zimbabwe’s socio-economic
crisis as Jonathan Moyo and others have attempted to convince you to
believe, then how come the very landless, and homeless black Zimbabweans in
Highfield and Kuwadzana continue to vote against the Zanu PF government even
after the so-called “successful completion of land redistribution”?
In fact, most of the people who voted here are some of the most
landless in this country. Why then should armed soldiers, Zanu PF activists
and other State security agents continue to invade beerhalls, nightclubs and
the homes of poor blacks in Kuwadzana, Highfield, Glen View, Glen Norah,
Budiriro, Chitungwiza? In the name of the land issue, what sin have these
poor landless people committed? These beerhalls, nightclubs and homes in the
townships are not white-owned commercial farms.
We, the black Zimbabweans, are very much aware of the truth.
In the face of relentless and mind-blowing one-sided propaganda, we
have remained steadfast and focused. Zanu PF never had the political will
and intention of providing land to the many landless and homeless people of
this country.
In fact, land redistribution and the provision of homes to the
homeless has been one of Robert Mugabe’s major failures among many others.
From 1980 up to the late Nineties, the land redistribution exercise had been
shelved and completely forgotten about.
The little land that had been acquired was grabbed by the rich and
political heavyweights.
It is on record that in the late Eighties, just before the visit by
the Queen of England, Mugabe’s government brutally evicted landless,
homeless squatters from all over Harare and dumped them at Porta Farm.
This clearly demonstrated the insensitivity and lack of compassion
that Zanu PF has always harboured for the landless and homeless. The
squatters were viewed as a shameful eyesore that must be hidden very far
away from the sight of the majestic Queen of England. I, therefore, ask:
Where was the intention to provide land to the landless then?
Again in the early Nineties the Zanu PF government viciously evicted
the Svosve clan people who had invaded a white-owned farm in the Marondera
area. I still remember very clearly that it was none other than
Vice-President Simon Muzenda who led those evictions.
Again I ask, where was the intention to provide land to the landless
masses of Zimbabwe?
The two political events that have led Zimbabwe into this sorry state
of affairs must now be brought into focus here.
Two events triggered off the madness, lawlessness, State-sponsored
murders and the general mayhem we all now know as the “land issue in
Zimbabwe”:
Firstly, the eruption of the political volcano called the MDC on the
Zimbabwean political landscape, which Zanu PF completely failed to contain,
then the rejection of the government-sponsored draft constitution in the
February 2000 referendum.
The referendum which was resoundingly lost by the Zanu PF government
was never about the land issue.
I repeat: the referendum was never about the land issue! The land
issue became a convenient addendum to the referendum immediately after the
earth-shaking result of the “No” vote was announced.
This became the platform upon which the brutal war against the
defenceless people of this country was declared by Mugabe and his henchmen.
They said this was “the Third Chimurenga”. This war was clearly
targeted upon the black people of this country and the very few whites who
were seen to have anything to do with the MDC.
The Third Chimurenga had nothing to do with land. It was, therefore,
primarily targeted at punishing anybody, black or white, who had anything to
do with MDC.
It must be emphasised here that the landless black people of this
country have suffered more brutality, torture and murder at the hands of
Mugabe’s ruthless fight against the MDC.
The Third Chimurenga is, therefore, a war being waged against us, the
landless, poor blacks of this country by this ruthless dictatorship.
The 2000 referendum was about the creation of pillars of a democratic
society in this country. The people spoke out very clearly that they wanted
their basic freedoms and rights to be recognised and enshrined as the
fundamental cornerstone of this country’s Constitution.
When the people found out that their wishes had been tampered with and
removed from the draft constitution that the government was now asking them
to accept as the new constitution they rejected it and thunderously voted
“No!”
What followed thereafter is what now the world knows as the “land
issue” or the Third Chimurenga.
But we Zimbabweans know the truth.